After yesterday's controversy with the benchmarks of Intel Core i9 9900K processors, Principled Technologies comes to the fore to respond to the accusations.
Yesterday jumped the Intel Core i9 9900K seemingly rigged benchmark scandal seen in its presentation and that had been made by Principled Technologies. The data that was revealed about the performance of this new processor were described as 'misleading' and that they tried to harm the flagship (currently) of its biggest competitor, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X.
Principled Technologies responds on the controversy of the Intel Core i9 9900K benchmark.
The specialized medium Wccftech has contacted Principled Technologies, the company that was hired to benchmark the Intel Core i9 9900K processor. Company co-founder Bill Catching has spoken out about the controversial tests. The company's statement highlights that 'we must categorically deny any dishonesty in our work on this project for Intel or any of our other projects'
You can read the full statement below:
Recently, we have seen several reports suggesting that Principled Technologies (PT) published misleading information in the study comparing Intel's gaming processors to AMD's. We apologize for our delay in responding, but it has been a very busy day and we wanted to be as thorough as possible in addressing inquiries regarding our tests. We will address specific questions and share more details about our methodology in a moment, but we must first respond directly to attempts to question our integrity.
For nearly 16 years, we have tested products for our customers because they trust our integrity. We've worked for not just a single company, but also for dozens of leading technology firms, including rivals like Intel and AMD, Microsoft and Google, Dell and HP, and many others.
Those customers trust Principled Technologies in part because our integrity and technical expertise are beyond reproach. We work hard to be the best in both areas. We chose our company name to emphasize our commitments to technology and our principles. (Accusers who say we're only in it for the money obviously haven't read our book: Limit Your Greed!)
Before proceeding further, we must categorically deny any dishonesty in our work on this project for Intel or on any of our other projects.
Project description
An overview of the project will provide useful context.
Our overall goal, and Intel's specific request for this project, was to create as fair a field as possible to compare AMD and Intel processors, as most of the gaming market will likely use them. To do that, we built and configured 16 systems for these benchmarks; we had two of each processor and motherboard configuration. We combined all the components as possible, the only variations were the motherboards, CPUs, and CPU coolers.
Responses to criticism
We have received a number of criticisms and inquiries regarding the testing methodology we use and possible objectivity in favor of Intel. We are providing additional information to make it as transparent as possible and to help address these concerns.
- Using 'Game Mode' on the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. Based on AMD's recommendations and our initial tests on Threadripper processors, we found that installing AMD Ryzen Master and enabling Game Mode boosted most of the results.
- Choice of refrigeration. We chose Noctua for cooling the processors, because they have identical systems that allow us to maintain balanced profiles.
- Memory speed. We used four 4GB DDR16 RAM memory sticks in all configurations, to allow the Intel Core i9 9900K and AMD Ryzen to fully utilize the memory bandwidth.
- Quality settings. We set all games to use the “High” setting or the equivalent setting, versus the “Ultra” or other settings, also to emphasize the performance of the CPU over the GPU. In the event that there were only three settings, we chose the upper option.
We are confident in our testing methodology and results. We welcome questions and are doing our best to answer the questions in our interim report, but doing so takes time. We will add answers if other problems arise.